Better Ways to Think

Truth as it is helps us to recognise,

There are more ways to think than this,

For us stinking thinking compels to despise,

Whilst states opposed combine for bliss.

Rebounding to care about our thought-world,

Enough to nurture our hearts,

Abrasion to vexation – kindness unfurled,

A goodness toward us darts.

Better it is to think amid truth-held test,

Defying imagination’s occasional folly,

Strident to form a mighty rest,

Mind’s discharged with a jolly.

You be the judge,

Are there better ways to think?

Is it time to begrudge?

Or instead perhaps to blink?

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

When times are awry and we clamour for a more reasonable scope for life, there is always a better way to think—a better way to see the situations we’re in.

This is not so much against a depressive episode, or panic attack, or similar, so much as it’s a reminder of how to manage times when we have choice over how we’ll respond. This merely recognises that at certain times, and in certain seasons, responses are made for us.

But this is not how life typically works. Most of us, most of the time, can control our thought-world.

Converting Stinking Thinking

This term, “stinking thinking,” I learned years ago. Everyone is affected, on occasion, by thoughts where we see the worst of a situation and we venture on that pitiful road for a time.

But we can do better. There’s a classic way for anyone to convert the thoughts that everyone has into a healthier reality; the recovery of the blinding moment.

There is warfare in the spiritual realm—and it manifests itself, first and foremost, for us as individuals, in the thought sphere.

Two ideas always come together to combat such warfare: the insight of awareness and the compulsion to act against the prevailing negative thought, countering it with kindness.

A Kindness Toward Ourselves

To think in genteel ways is a pervasive kindness—enfolded of God’s blessing—over us.

The way through to defeating stinking thinking is gentleness firstly with ourselves. When we’ve managed this, we’re open to gentleness with the situations causing us angst, and therefore with others also.

Understanding the Nature of the “Testing” Life

Seeing into our situations—resolving to find the testiness therein—is ripping away the negative power of our imaginations that despoil our spiritual progress.

Upon the truth is found platform for rest. There’s no need to fret. The world as it is isn’t the threat—our minds are.

The mind that knows this reality is empowered to inform the rest of the body, and the soul’s benefit materialises.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.